Replacement Fuse's - What are my options ????

Albertporter, I will answer your questions in the order asked, yes, maybe and no.
I have exchanged power cords with cables made with high grade components and haven't noticed any sonic benefit. Is it my ears which don't hear as well as others? Is it my home's wiring which won't allow six feet of high quality cable between the wall outlet and my amp to improve what the 40 feet of 14 gauge romex provides from the breaker box? Is it my auditory memory which isn't acute enough? Maybe my equipment just isn't good enough to reveal the difference? Am I not interested enough? Whatever the reason, I don't hear any difference with power cord changes.
Now with interconnects my answer is maybe. Although I have tried quite a few different interconnects I have never heard a difference. This one I chalk up to laziness/indifference.
As for speaker cables I am convinced I have noticed differences. Surprisngly the most expensive cable I've owned, Straightwire Black Silk, made no impression on me. Pretty certain Audioquest Midnight was the first cable I noticed a significant difference with. Depth was the word I remember associating with this cable. There have been others that impressed me with their sonic signature.
These are my personal observations. I have no problem with the fact that others come to different conclusions. We experience the world through different ears and eyes. We have different desires and different expectations. It's no surprise our outcomes differ when we experiment with system changes. I don't claim there is no difference, only that I don't hear it and am not interested in listening for it.
The question I have to ask about fuses changing the audible character of an amp is this. If a certain fuse makes an amp sound better, why doesn't the designer/manufacturer of the amp use it. If a manufacturer is out to sell the best sounding amp, why wouldn't he spend $10 or $15 to make this simple change? I'm assuming we're talking about amps costing $2k+. If I'm paying $3.5 on an amp, I'd surely pay $10 more if it sounds that much better and save myself the trouble of changing fuses.
Tim

Timrhu, I don't know why you don't hear differences in power cables and such. It's a big deal on my system and based on posts here at Audiogon, lots of people get good results with swapping these things out.

Now if you said you thought the price of these were not commiserate with performance gained, that would be a value judgement. I agree that many times a system must be pressed to the upper edge before hyper expensive tweaks make any sense.

As for why manufacturers don't add such things. It's for the same reason as other products, money.

Most of the time OE tires on new cars are not the best available, new homes usually don't have the highest quality faucets or appliances. Photocopiers frequently come only partially charged with toner, and that new triple blade shaver has only two spares in the five slots available.

It's smart marketing. When a manufacturer adds one dollar cost to an audio product, the retail goes up $5.00.

A wise manufacturer leaves off the super AC cord, the gold fuses, the designer caps and doesn’t include high end interconnects, so the retail price remains attractive.

Frequently, an audio customer enters the store with maximum price already set in their head. Make a product too expensive and you loose that guy.

Add the fact that not everyone believes in or want's those tweaks and those that do, have more fun adding the ones THEY choose when they've recovered from the initial purchase shock.

Certainly a $25.00 fuse is not a make or break deal performance wise. There are systems that likely would not benefit, even at that small price.

In my system and several others in my group, $25.00, for what's gained is a good value. Factor in (if you don't blow a lot of fuses), you could get three to five years of increased listening pleasure and still be able to pull that fuse when you sell.

I like things that add performance to my system that don't cost a lot. It usually doesn’t work that way, so I'm grateful for small, reasonable improvements.

I did read a post on another forum some time ago about a guy that replaced six(?!) fuses in his active speakers for Hifi-Tuning fuses... Infinty Reference Series?? (don´t remember name of the speaker - sorry) and got very good results.

Also I read on the same forum that one guy swapped fuses in his ML speakers with good results also.

Best,
Mike

Seems to me you should go to the local hifi shop, pull the fuse,and see what the high end designers use.
Do you think they use regular old fuses?

Russe41, Yes.